


frost

by BlackSclera



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Time Travel, mute!Tsuna
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-26 12:03:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17141399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackSclera/pseuds/BlackSclera
Summary: He wishes he had the voice to tell her, "I'm sorry."(Tsuna wakes up ten years into the past with memories of a one-sided war that took away everything he had.)





	1. Chapter 1

This wouldn't be the first time, Tsuna knows.

 

The first time he'd come, it was barely a few months after the inheritance and a terrifyingly big part of himself had wanted to know, wanted to see for himself if he would survive if he made the jump. It wasn't impossible, he had reasoned with himself a little stupidly as if this was just another matter not worth the serious contemplation; he'd survived far - _far_ \- worse that it would seem almost comically absurd for him to die from a little height.

 

(He tries not to think about how likely it was to happen, tries not to think about the part of him that instinctively knows he wouldn’t.)

 

He survived the battle against Mukuro and Varia, far from a willing participant, much less anybody capable of defending themselves against actual assassins and mass murderers, but he did, he had to, _or else, Dame-Tsuna. Or else._

 

And wasn’t that generally how his life went?

 

Uttered threats, thinly-veiled truth, cloaked under thousands of layers of white lies, of sins and history, of rings drowning in deep, deep red. It had always been a matter of living up to the future’s expectation of him and the footsteps of a man centuries before him.

 

But Tsuna wasn't that much of an idiot, and even if he could fool others, he couldn't fool himself.

 

He knew what he came to the bridge for, had known that had Reborn not come that day, he would've chosen to drown not because he couldn't swim but because he chose not to. It was what set the bridge apart from all the other battles he had fought or had to survive without a choice, he thinks, _knows_ with a certainty that belied the faint voice at the back of his mind. He had wanted to win against Mukuro, Xanxus, and Byakuran, but he hadn't done that all to fight for himself, hadn’t done that to prove his worth and strength even if Reborn made it seem like it was. He hadn’t done it because he wanted to, but because he _needed_ to and if it was him or _them-_

 

Tsuna thinks it’s not much of a decision. Not much of a sacrifice.

 

It had been a losing battle from the very moment he'd met Reborn a decade ago on his doorstep, before the words ‘mafia boss’ left his lips, before he came to know Vongola, before he understood what Vongola _meant_.

 

Just that this time, he wasn't here to stop him.

 

Nobody was.

 

(The phantom weight of the Vongola Ring, choking and suffocating. In his core, he felt their eyes pierce past his battered soul, and they weep.

 

_What has Vongola become, Tsunayoshi?_

 

_When you promised its destruction, this wasn't what I had wanted, Decimo._

 

_You have become something worse than all of the sins that encompasses our history and blood._

 

 _You betrayed your family._ )

 

He inhales deeply, vacant eyes taking in the sky and dim streetlights. The wisps of smoke and scattered debris mocked him, prodded at tender scars hidden beneath the cloak. He'd fought against it long enough, and he had resolved himself to let go.

 

There was nobody left.

 

Nothing but flames, nothing but charring flesh and ashes, nothing but their corpses and unspoken regrets.

 

_I couldn’t have asked for a better student, Tsunayoshi._

 

He slowly closes his eyes and breathes.

 

_I’m proud of you._

 

He takes one step forward, his arms spread-

 

"Sawada!”

 

_Dame-Tsuna._

 

“Don’t do it-!”

 

_Thank you._

 

“ _Please.”_

 

A beat, the fragmented memory of charcoal eyes and bloodied lips, the dimming of yellow glass beneath his fingertips.

 

Tsuna opens his eyes. Breathes. Turns.

 

Dark blue hair, sharp brown eyes, and that distinct scar on her right cheek which she despised yet didn't hide. A familiar face in the midst of static and muted screams. An anchor that desperately sought to ground him yet inevitably didn't quite succeed. She was the last of them, of the Arcobalenos, of what remained of his family.

 

"Lal Mirch," he greets pleasantly, arms spread out wide and tendrils of brown hair whipping against chilly wind, "You came back earlier than I expected."

 

She stops, her breathing labored from running and from- something, he thinks, something else that has nothing to do with the buckling of her knees and everything to do with the wild, temperamental fluctuation of her flames between them and around him. Her eyes are ruthless yet brittle when she looks at him.

 

"I knew this would happen," she says, more to herself than him, and her jaw clenches from the strength exerted behind gritted teeth, "I knew this would happen but I didn't think that you would- idiot, _you damn idiot_ , how could you-"

 

"Did you?" he asks mildly as he turns his back on her.

 

"I trusted you, Sawada."

 

"I'm a lost cause," he responds lightly, "you know that."

 

"And I still trusted you. Doesn't that mean anything at all to you?" she spits.

 

The brunet lets his gaze fall back to the rushing water, dark, nearly midnight black from the sky, and he thinks of the hundreds of coffins they buried, the blood that he couldn't wash off his burned and scarred hands, the screams of terror that he hears in the quiet, and the smell of smoke and gunpowder that follows him to his dreams.

 

_Lal, do you know what it feels like to kill your family and bury their corpses with your own hands?_

 

_Because I do. I dream about it every night, I think of it every single day and it's all I can do. It's the only thing I can do._

 

"It's useless," he says instead and he knows that Lal hates this part of him, hates his gentle tone, hates the way it's just a breath away from being a whisper, hates the way his words sink, biting and razor-sharp and meant to hurt like it had every intention of digging into skin and peeling it back until he's empty, until he's raw, until he's scraped dry and thin.

 

( _It's just like you to be so kind and unforgiving at the same time,_ she'd told him once, and he never forgets.)

 

"So that's it." She barks a laugh, scornful but not resigned. Tsuna wonders what it will take to make her give up. "You'll leave me- us. Just like them."

 

_A flash of blond locks, piercing blue eyes, sharp grin, and the whisper of her name on his lips-_

 

The words ' _just like him_ ' aren't spoken but it was just as heard, just as loud.

 

He says nothing even if he hears the pitiful, desperate whisper of an apology at the back of his mind from the person he used to be. There were too many mistakes, too much he'd lost, too many missed opportunities for him to be able to say _I'm sorry_ like it could fix everything he'd broken and killed. Like it could make everything alright.

 

Like it could bring them back.

 

She breathes, her flames lashing, twisting, pleading. "You're a coward, Sawada."

 

Despite himself, Tsuna laughs.

 

Even as a man at the age of 24 who had gone through hell and back, one who's made misery his company and betrayal his home, he could never change what he'd always been, could never pretend like it didn't hurt him to acknowledge as much as it does to realize that absolutely nothing has changed since he'd met them.

 

He would always be a coward, through and through. Not even the hundred bullets he took to his head and the number of wars he survived and won would change that.

 

"I know," he replies.

 

"You'll make Haru and Kyoko cry."

 

"I know," he repeats, lies. They won't. He knows they won't. He hasn't seen either of them since Hayato and Ryohei died.

 

(Since he killed them.)

 

"You're the only one they have left," her voice lowers and it's heartbreaking to hear Lal say it like that but there was no going back. Tsuna had made up his mind ten years ago, hadn’t he?  "Are you leaving them, too?"

 

"They have you."

 

"It isn't me that they want."

 

He dares to look her in the eyes, an edge to his voice. "And it isn't me that they need, either, Lal. They deserve better. They always have."

 

"You can't go on believing that you killed them, Sawada," she interrupts in a tone that hinted at the topic being a repeating issue of the past, her eyes wet and voice firm despite the shaking of her body. She was fighting a losing battle, Tsuna thinks to himself, and they both know that. Why was she doing this to herself? "How long will you keep blaming yourself for what happened? Kyoko and Haru would never blame you-"

 

Tsuna knows they _won't_ and that's probably why it hurts more than it should. "I couldn't protect them," he retorts in a deceptively even tone, "I took Kyoko's only family away from her and I left Hayato to die. I've never seen Bianchi ever since. Haru is worried about you and that's the only reason she stays. I've taken her home away from her and this," he gestures to what remains of the town with a sweep of his hand, smoking piles of rubble and ash the only visible thing for miles on end, "This is all that's left of it. Kyoya died trying to protect Namimori, and even Mukuro and Chrome were-" his voice breaks and his throat locks up, eyes stinging.

 

 _But you are our home,_ the expression on her face seemed to say.

 

He hadn't been anything worth coming back to for a long time.

 

"...I can't continue like this," he says at last, "The last of Millefiore is gone. Vongola has lost all its battles but we won the war. There's nothing I can do to atone or repent for what I was unable to do."

 

"And how is this any better? _How is killing yourself any better?_ " Lal asks incredulously, her tone growing hysterical at the certainty she was finally beginning to see in Tsuna's eyes and he thinks he should be happy that she’s starting to understand but all he’s left feeling is the bitter taste of ashes on his tongue. "Taking your own life and running away with your tail between your legs… You're not 14 anymore, Sawada. Is this the best that you could come up with after everything that Reborn has taught you?"

 

His smile falls a little and she recoils because it had never bidden well for anyone when Tsuna loses his composure, loses the calm that Reborn had drilled into him with silver bullets and sharp words made of steel. He may have been her student once, but Lal has learned more from Tsuna than she could ever hope to teach him.

 

"What else is there for me to do?"

 

She grits her teeth, visibly suppressing the big part of her that wanted to lose this fight. "Has living for them ever crossed your mind? They died for you, to make sure you'd stay alive, to make sure you'd survive even at the cost of their own lives because _they loved you_ and you... _you're just making fucking excuses to run away_ -"

 

There's a subtle shift in the air, sharp and chilling. Tsuna hasn’t moved, his expression blank, but something in him changes.

 

This time, Lal Mirch does take a step back.

 

"To run away?" he echoes, animosity lacing his voice. "They died because I was too weak. They died because I couldn't be there, because I wasn’t strong enough even though I promised I'd protect them. I dragged them into this whole mess in the first place, Lal Mirch. They died in _vain_ ." And there was something entirely different in the way his eyes glow under the dim street lights, wild and manic, fingers twitching in the way they usually would when he had his gloves on his hands. "They're gone, Lal. They're dead. I'm not making excuses. I’m not _running away._ I’m not that selfish. What good would continuing to live bring aside from making people - the people left from the war - suffer, knowing that the person who deserves to survive the least is well and alive? There's nothing I can do but-"

 

"It's never easy!" she retorts just as sharply but her voice is shaking and she’s deathly pale. This wasn't supposed to happen. _He_ wasn’t supposed to be the one who gave in first. He wasn’t supposed to be the one who told her there was nothing left. He wasn’t supposed to be the one who told her that this was all his fault.

 

He wasn’t supposed to look her in the eyes and tell her that this was the only thing he can do.

 

"I know it isn't easy! Don't you ever, for a second, think that I don't understand what it feels like. I lost them once, Sawada. I lost Colonello twice and _I led him to his death in both lives._ You can't give me that bullshit that you have fucking nothing to live for because if you think that... if you really think that-”

 

For once, there is fear in her dark eyes.

 

“Then I don’t deserve to be alive.”

 

But Tsuna doesn’t so much as twitch or move. He has made up his mind.

 

She was ten years too late.

 

"What about Kyoko?” Lal asks. “Haru? Bianchi? Fuuta? What about them? What about _me_?"

 

"Lal Mirch," he whispers, his voice soft. "I'm not him. I haven't been _him_ for years."

 

She's trying, he knows she is. But there is no point in trying to find something that was never there in the first place.

 

The Sawada Tsunayoshi she knew was already gone. Dead to the world, remembered only by those who he had forsaken, most of what made him already buried 6 feet under the ground, beneath his feet, beneath the pile of corpses that were once his family. He was no Mafia Boss nor a friend, nor a son. As he is right now, he's nothing but a disappointment, a failure who exists for reasons he's long since outlived.

 

She closes her eyes. "That's-" _That isn't true_.

 

Tsuna's eyes soften but they do not warm. "Is it?”

 

Lal stills, hoping for something else than what Tsuna deems as truth, hoping to be able to tell him that there was still hope, that they could fix it, but they can't. _They can't,_ Tsuna has tried, and he has had enough.

 

"I have nothing left."

 

He looks her in the eyes and he sees the exact moment that the realization dawns on her and it shouldn’t hurt but it does.

 

(The bare flicker of a flame that was extinguished just as quickly as it was ignited.

 

The voluntary rejection of his own blood, of his own heritage, of his identity-

 

 _The destruction of Vongola runs bone-deep, and wasn’t he Vongola, too?_ )

 

"...It's gone," she whispers so, so softly that he almost doesn't hear it. Her eyes are wide and the shudder that wracks her body looks a little like tremors are violently raging under her skin, her hands rising in an aborted movement to approach. There is nothing but despair in her voice.

 

"Sawada, please tell me it isn't..."

 

Tsuna smiles hollowly.

 

"I never intended to run away," he tells her.

 

He isn't that much of a fool - of a _coward_ \- to think that he will be able to escape without getting what he deserved. Death is a luxury far past his reach, be it in a sense of comprehension or literality.

 

Death is a luxury for men who haven’t bargained their conscience. Who haven’t made too many sacrifces, who haven’t taken too many wrong turns.

 

"I will be the last of Vongola." His smile is sincere, broken. "So please, Lal Mirch.”

 

_Let me be the one who puts an end to this._

 

She breathes in sharply, her chest heaving and shoulders shaking. There is hatred and disbelief in her eyes when her fingers leave her cheeks wet, when they leave trembling like she couldn't control herself, like she couldn't-

 

"I will never," her voice breaks and he knows it hurts, knows that there is nothing he can do but watch her break, "never be able to forgive you."

 

(And that's the problem, isn't it? That it was ever an option to forgive him, that those words in itself sounded a little too much like acceptance, like an apology of her own for not trying hard enough.)

 

“I expected nothing else," he says and he watches with dread as Lal wraps her hand around the gun in her holster. He opens his mouth to tell her that she doesn't have to, that he has submerged enough hands in crimson, stained enough lives with charcoal from smoke of burned corpses, that she doesn't have to be the one who falls deeper, but she _smiles_ at him and it is the first that he has seen after Colonello's second death.

 

It’s the first, and he wishes that it wasn’t for this.

 

"Nobody regretted it, Sawada,” she says, honest and true, the promise of _family_ in her eyes.

 

 _Nobody regretted dying for you,_ she doesn't say, knowing better than to dig her fingers into opened wounds, _because you saved them and gave them a place to call home. You gave us, the castaways, the monstrosities not worth saving and those who didn't belong, a family, and a purpose. You gave everyone everything and more._

 

_I’m sorry that it had to come to this._

 

_I’m sorry that this is the only way._

 

_I’m sorry, Sawada._

 

Another flicker of a flame quickly extinguished, another reminder of the absolute if not the perpetual disappearance of his inheritance in his veins, and she despairs because she knows that Tsuna doesn't believe a single word she has said.

 

"Thank you, Lal Mirch."

 

She smiles tearfully at him, something other than her voice breaking-

 

"No. Thank you, Sawada."

 

-and then she pulls the trigger.

 

"Goodbye."

 

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

 

Tsuna wakes up to the sight of his old room's ceiling and it takes a while for the ringing in his ears to fade, for his vision to clear, for everything to snap into place, and for him to realize that something was very, very wrong.

 

But then he does realize and it's a little like falling off a cliff, falling into another unknown point in time, his vision twisting and distorted, everything indistinguishable from memory and wishful thinking. The feeling drains out through the tips of his fingers, leaving him numb, and _god, this can't be real, couldn't be happening, he couldn't live through this again, not for the third time-_

 

He sits upright, practically clawing the sheets off of his body to scan the room he was in, greatly panicked by the sheer out-of-place familiarity of this place. He drinks in the hastily set-aside mess on the floor, his old school bag, and his disorganized desk. His eyes are wide with panic and wet with unshed tears, his heart seizing painfully in his chest.

 

 _No_ , he tells himself, unscarred fingers digging into unmarred palms, he _couldn't, this wasn't- isn't supposed to happen. This isn't happening. It can't be. No, no, no-_

 

He shouldn't be here, shouldn't be awake and alive, standing in his room which he remembers burning to the ground during the second war against Millefiore without the weight of the mantle around his shoulders-

 

 _Not like this_ , he begs, _not again-_

 

"...Tsu-kun? Are you awake?"

 

The voice, just like the rest of the room, is familiar.

 

He feels the tears falling before he could stop himself and he's seen so much, had experienced firsthand what it was like to suffer from Mukuro's and Viper's illusions, but nothing came as close to scaring him as much as this reality does. He doesn't know what to feel, doesn't know how to feel after- after everything. He can't do this, god, he can't hold himself together, not with what was left, not with the broken pieces that he couldn't even find.

 

"Tsu-kun?" the voice calls again, concerned, and he doesn't breathe. Couldn't.

 

He was… afraid.

 

Tsuna was scared.

 

He doesn't want to see, doesn't want to believe because if he did, it would just be taken away from him all over again and he was so tired. He's watched enough people die in front of his very eyes, both enemy and ally, the splatter of their blood on his skin, the last heave of their chest and pulses on their necks, and he doesn't think he'd be able to go through this without losing what remains of him, because that was her voice and he wants so desperately to believe that this was real even if it isn't, even if it's just on borrowed time because he couldn't even say goodbye, couldn't say _I'm sorry_ for never telling her what he has become-

 

The door opens and she walks in. Warm, worried. Alive.

 

His mother is _alive_.

 

(It doesn't seem like it's been that long since Kyoya entered his office saying, _'Millefiore got to them first.'_

 

And at that time, Tsuna hadn't really known what got to him more; the fact that he knew just who Kyoya was pertaining to without having to ask, without daring to question, or the fact that he didn't so much as bat an eyelash at the revelation, that he had nothing to ask more than, _'Their bodies?'_ in a tone that was so weary and tired, having been just so generally done with Millefiore, the Mafia, and the goddamned world.

 

 _'I retrieved them from the site,'_ Kyoya had replied coolly, the expression on his face not betraying what he truly felt.

 

Tsuna had nodded. Not that there was much he could do but accept it and take it, to cushion its fall with his own bare hands.

 

He had given up, and Kyoya knew that. They all did.

 

They, who remained.

 

 _'You've become quite pathetic, little animal,'_ Kyoya had said to him, a small smile - not that of pleasure or acknowledgment, but that of compliance - which Tsuna didn't hesitate returning, no matter how thin and broken at the edges.

 

_'You and I, both.'_

 

His guardian had merely closed his eyes, his smile blooming into a full-blown smirk. _'I suppose.'_ )

 

"...You just collapsed on your way home, according to the people who saw you. You seemed alright but I still called a doctor just in case something was wrong. They said that you will be alright after getting a little bit of rest." A hesitant pause. "Are… are you alright? Does anything hurt? You've been unconscious for two days and they said that you just needed to rest but…"

 

Tsuna hesitates, mind reeling.

 

Right, of course, _right_. He's in the past, if not an alternate universe of the past, a little over a decade back with - he takes a sweeping glance at the room - Reborn nowhere in sight. He was in his room, his mother was alright, and he was- had been unconscious for two days after falling unconscious on his way home from school, no doubt the influence of time traveling that shouldn't have happened in the first place but now that he was here- now that he's here-

 

"...I'm okay," he weakly says, or at least, _tries_ to say because the next thing he knows is he's bent over the edge of his bed, hacking and scraping his throat dry, the unpleasant taste of acid resting on the back of his tongue. He can just about make out his mother hurrying to reach for the glass of water placed on top of his desk from the corner of his eye as she carefully rubbed soothing circles - and his body desperately fights down the bone-deep shudder at the warmth of her hand - on his back. She looks far too tense with her fingers shaking around its grip on the glass, her eyes filled with mirrored hurt.

 

If Tsuna had just been a decade and a few years younger, he wouldn't have seen this. He would've taken _this_ for granted.

 

(He honestly wished he hadn't learned the lesson a little too late.)

 

"Thank you," he whispers against the rim of the glass, expecting his voice to come out raspy on a rough exhale but then his throat constricts and _twists-_

 

He covers his mouth with his fingers as he coughs, this one harsher than the last, and he stares with wide eyes as his hand comes away dripping with red.

 

"Do you need anything?" Nana asks, reaching for the bottle of water behind her, and Tsuna snatches his bloody hand under the covers, wipes it and hopes that she doesn't notice. "I'll go get some more water downstairs. Are you hungry?"

 

He manages a nod and fakes a close-lipped smile, hopes and prays to whatever cruel deity that his lips are clean of the blood he just coughed out. His hands shake under the blanket that pooled around his hips but he holds his body with a brutally forced calm that Reborn drilled into him for years, his vice-like grip on his control not giving for even an inch.

 

She couldn't see, _couldn't let her see-_

 

For what seemed like an eternity, she stays to stare, uncertain, and in those few minutes she does, Tsuna fights down the urge to wipe his chin just to see. "Just… call me if you need anything, alright?" she tells him as she stands to head for the door, the concern in her eyes not leaving as she threw one last glance over her shoulder before she left.

 

Tsuna watches the door close, fists shaking, breathing uncontrolled. He- he didn't want to think, the last thing he wanted to do was to think about what was happening but he knew exactly what good that would bring him. It wasn't that too long ago - not even an hour, and how fucked up is that? - when he wished for nothing but Vongola to end by his very hands yet now he's here in a time that he so desperately wished wasn't the past but a parallel universe, alive when he shouldn't be, when he had no right to be.

 

He pushes himself off the bed and walks to his mirror on unsteady and unbalanced feet, calendar hanging lopsidedly by its reflective surface, and he stares. With his head a mess, the storm in his thudding heart imminent, he reaches out to touch his reflection like he believes his hand would go through and reach far past what its surface would allow.

 

And with some trepidation and grim acceptance that he has long since grown accustomed to carrying, he opens his mouth and speaks.

 

Something sharp digs into his throat and he heaves, fights down the bile rising in his throat when all that pours out of his mouth is red.

 

There was no sound.

 

He tries and tries and _tries_ until he is screaming, forehead pressed against the cold unrelenting surface of the mirror, hoping that this is all a lie, a cruel illusion, tears dropping, swirling with red on his balled fists which he bashed against the mirror with as much strength as he could muster in his weakened state, hating and hating and _hating-_

 

He falls to his knees and, for what seems like the first time in years, allows himself to fall apart.

 

 _Nothing has changed._ His shoulders shake violently as he closes his eyes and claws at the cracked mirror, blind to the red that trickled down his injured knuckles and the peeling skin. _Nothing at all._

 

_Just like always, I never had a choice._

 

When Nana returns to his room minutes later, she drops the tray of food she brought with her, eyes wide and complexion draining into a sickly white, the urge to scream a scorching need on her tongue as she rushes to his side, whispering reassurances that she couldn't tell apart from the lies, telling him to calm down and that everything's going to be alright despite all the questions she must have had hen she came into her son's room to see him breaking down in front of a mirror after being unconscious for days.

 

Something in her eyes tells him that she knows that he was different, that he just wasn't the same.

 

That he wasn't him.

 

(And yet again, he takes another thing away from the people he loves.)

  
Tsuna wishes he had the voice to tell her, _"I'm sorry."_


	2. Chapter 2

It was almost never this quiet. Not after Reborn, or Lambo, or Bianchi.

 

Not after Vongola.

 

Tsuna couldn't remember their house being this empty even if he had spent the first decade of his life shutting his mother out, couldn't remember the silence being this deafening, this  _ painful _ , as he takes in the empty chairs in the kitchen and living room. The emptiness feels heavy on his skin, clinging tooth and claw, dragging until the walls feel like they're closing in on him as the ceiling descends on his head and the floor sinks beneath his feet.

 

They were always there.

 

They had always been there.

 

Tsuna's fingers dig into the skin of his arm.

 

_ Don't _ . He thinks and he tries to pretend that his eyes don't sting.  _ Just don't. _

 

"What's wrong?"

 

His eyes snap to his mother's across the dining table, thoughts momentarily ripped clean off of the surface of his mind as he fights down the urge to look away. He has her eyes, he couldn't help but notice, he has the softness and her smile.

 

But he was every bit his father the moment he left them and he's left to wonder why his mother ended up settling for something less than what she deserved. Because they could've been better, they all could have been happier. His father with his family, and his mother with someone who treated her like an actual family-

 

(If Reborn could see him now, he would probably laugh and call him stupid.

 

_ You're hopeless, Dame-Tsuna,  _ he would say, laughter in his eyes and pride in his tone.

 

He was the Strongest Hitman to the world, but he was the best home tutor to his student.

 

Tsuna would give anything in this world just to hear him say those words again.)

 

His hands are shaking by the time he looks at them and he grits his teeth.

 

_ This was never supposed to happen. _

 

"...Tsu-kun," his mother says, tentative, and buried in there was the repressed urge to say something more than just his name. The dark bags under her eyes seem more prominent than they had been in his room, her knuckles nearly white from how tightly she's gripping on to her own hands.

 

_ This was never supposed to happen, _ he finds himself repeating, a tad bit angrier at his life, at himself. His mother didn't ask. She cleaned the mess he made without a word as he sat there, too shaken, too tired, too weak to be able to do anything more than follow her with his eyes like he still couldn't believe this was happening. She had stayed eerily silent as she cleaned his wounds and tended to his injuries, lips pressed in a thin line even as she fought to suppress the trembling of her fingers.

 

The places where the glass dug into his skin stung but nothing could hurt quite as much as the sight of his mother suffering and the knowledge that had he been 14, he wouldn't have seen how much his mother worried, how much she cared when he had been too busy failing in school and wasting his life away in the confines of his room.

 

"...Tsu-kun," she tries again and this time, her voice breaks a little and Tsuna fights back a flinch. The question is clear.

 

He looks back at his hands. They were- foreign. Weird. Almost like they don't belong to him.

 

_ Without the scars, without the ring- _

 

He closes his eyes.

 

_ [I'm sorry.] _ He mouths, more to himself than to his mother as he stares at the table. And really, what else is there to say? His mother was dead- had been for years because he had made the mistake of taking her for granted when he should have told her all the things he needed to say, when he could have been stronger, when he could have been a better son by telling her the truth.

 

Tsuna ached. He ached to stay in this time, to make it up to the people he failed, to do things better.

 

A soft sound, weak, and a shuddered exhale.

 

"It's okay."

 

And god,  _ Tsuna ached. _ He knows she means it, knows that it was all she could say, knows that those words are enough to tell him what couldn't be said. But-

 

His nails dig deeper. He tastes blood in his mouth.

 

_ Without a scar, without a ring- _

 

His mother was dead.

 

_ This isn't real. _

 

Tsuna meets his mother's eyes across the table and smiles.

 

He could lie to himself for a little longer.

 

(He's been lying to himself for ten years, after all. How is this any different?)

 

*

 

For a while, all Tsuna does is stare at his cracked reflection.

 

He doesn't leave his room, doesn't take one step past the door of their house. He can barely look at his mother without feeling sick to his stomach or tasting copper boiling at the back of his throat but he takes it in, drowns in the warmth of her presence even as he shuts and locks the windows of his room. He knows far too much, from the names of his classmates and their families to the children who have yet to be born at this time. He knows places that currently are, that was, that would be over the course of the next ten years, knows that at the end of it all is nothing but corpses buried under debris. He knows of Vongola, of Varia, of all of the Mafia and its sins. He knows of future Guardians, of technology a hundred steps ahead, of the dangers of the pink Bazookas and boxes and rings.

 

Tsuna knows far too much yet entirely too little and it's starting to kill him  _ because he doesn't know what to do with knowing. _

 

He inhales, shrinks a little more to himself as he wraps his arms around his knees, back pressed against the side of his bed. He couldn't bear looking outside, couldn't stand the blueness of the sky and the peace. He knows he'll destroy it, knows that he is to blame for burning it to the ground. He is 14-years-old but his mind is twice as old and his body remembers killing, remembers bleeding. Not a single day passed in the future where his gloves didn't drip with red and blaze with pure amber which ominously swirled with crimson every time he fought. He had almost forgotten what it was like to swallow the pills and willingly take bullets to his head, the flame on his head constantly dormant because Tsunayoshi had been enough to win battles, to murder, and Decimo didn't have to appear. Brown eyes, cold smiles, it was an era where they feared the incarnation of Vongola's sins.

 

(No one has lived long enough to remember what warm amber looked like in his eyes.)

 

He closes his eyes and rests his forehead against his folded arms. He had to come to a decision. He didn't have enough time and he wasn't a fool, wasn't the same naive child who used to take things for granted.

 

This opportunity will be taken away from him and he knows it will be. He never had anything easy, never had the luxury. The clock is always ticking, counting down to the next tragedy.

 

He has to decide.

 

He has to decide on whether he should leave Vongola, or stay and see it to its inevitable end.

 

He has to decide on whether he's willing to drag them back into the war, drag them back into their coffins with his own hands, or stand with the decision that he is never going to see or talk to them again.

 

He has to decide on whether he should ask them to stay, or leave.

 

Tsuna opens his eyes and stares, his gaze empty. The warmth of the flames under his skin shied away from him, pressed desperately against the seals that Nono had buried under his bones. He almost couldn't tell who was going to burn first if they ended up touching.

 

The skin of his ring finger is rubbed raw, the skin peeling slightly from how much he's been scraping at it with his nails.

 

Inheritance. Blood. Ancestry.

 

He breathes, tries to reach with shaking fingers, and the flame is ice cold. It shouldn't have come as a surprise. It had lost all its warmth for years, after all, and he'd been fighting alone. There was a reason why orange flames never blazed in his eyes or his head after Hayato's death. So it shouldn't have, couldn't have, but it did.

 

_ Rejection. _

 

His heart twists and Tsuna stands, his decision made.

 

Destiny is a cruel little thing.

 

*

 

It takes two weeks.

 

He talked to his mother, persisted to despite his painfully twinging wrist and cramping fingers, talked about the money that his father sends home, how they had met and how it had seemed a little like love at first sight, how Tsuna was doing in school because Tsuna never did tell her, and he knew that it showed. He knew that it showed in how he talked about himself and his father, how he wrote, how he looked at her like a ghost that he wasn't him. His mother had looked at his face with a grim understanding, her usually carefree demeanor lurking still but lost behind the somber grief that clouded her eyes.

 

"You're still Tsu-kun," she had said despite everything and that broke Tsuna more than it fixed him.

 

She promised, told him she'd think about his father and their family. And really, that was enough. That was all he could hope to ask for. She didn't deserve being thrown under like that, didn't deserve not knowing even if it was for the safety that Vongola - he - promised. She had spent far longer than Tsuna did pretending that it was alright to not know, that it's best that she stayed quiet and kept what she truly felt under layers of fake and forced optimism. And Iemitsu -  _ and he did, too, didn't he? Like father, like son _ \- encouraged that blissful ignorance by doing the same, by comforting her with empty reassurances and promises.

 

It's what killed her -  _ them  _ \- in the end, and Tsuna couldn't bear to watch her die the same way.

 

_ Not again, _ he'd told himself as he wrote,  _ I'm still him. But I had my shortcomings. I made mistakes. I won't do it again. Not this time. Not if I can do something about it. _

 

And Nana understood, had wrapped her arms around him as sobs wracked through her body.

 

"What have they done to you?" is all she could ask and even Tsuna didn't know how to tell her that it wasn't what they did, it was what he couldn't do that made and destroyed him.

 

Something eased between them, a mutual understanding that weighed heavy in their shared silences at times. But it was alright, Tsuna thinks, it was alright because this was all he could have and it's enough.

 

It takes two weeks before he convinces his mother to leave the house.

 

Tsuna reassured her that he'll be alright, that she had to because it wasn't safe ( _ not with him, _ he didn't say but from the haunted look in her eyes, he reckoned she knew anyway). He tells her that she isn't leaving him, that he is more than capable of looking after himself, asks her to trust him on this. He also convinces her to take the money his father had sent home with her to her family despite her arguments.

 

It takes two weeks, but by then, his mother is back with her family and the Sawada household isn't much of a house as it was a pile of debris.

 

Sawada Tsunayoshi disappears.

 

He has made his decision.


	3. Chapter 3

_His blood is warm._

 

_It clings to his skin, the unmistakable tang of copper mixing with gunpowder and the scent of ash, and it's the closest thing to home he'll soon learn to have. It's the cold embrace of war, the grim company of death in every breath taken into blackened lungs, the crippling sensation of never knowing the future, if there will ever be an aftermath left to witness._

 

_The man in white has his fingers wrapped around the interwoven threads of dimensions. Ruthless and without mercy, he'd conquered and destroyed, and he wonders, most times, he wonders what it's like to end lives that have already been destroyed in another reality, to feel the burden - if there even was, if it even weighed on Byakuran's conscience - of watching world after world fall apart by his own hands, never quite content, never quite satisfied._

 

_The mantle is draped over his shaking shoulders. It's shredded and torn, and unlike the red on his hands, it's cold. It weighs heavy on his bones, pins him to the ground as he kneels over the child he'd taken into his home when he was fourteen years old._

 

_He smells like smoke and crackling thunder, and Tsuna screams._

 

_Lambo is five when he was thrown out of his Family with one instruction: assassinate the strongest hitman, Reborn, and bring glory to Bovino. They gave him hand grenades and bazookas because although he was their heir, he doesn't know how to use a gun, doesn't know how to pull the trigger no matter how many times they force his small fingers around it, no matter how hard they hit his the back of his hands and face until he's barely breathing._

 

_He shouldn't have to, Tsuna had told Lambo._

 

_("What a shame," Aunt Ottavio says and it haunts his dreams, echoes until he couldn't sleep, until he learns to scream and yell and be loud to drown out the sound of her voice, "If only your parents could see you now.")_

 

_And Lambo doesn't, couldn't, he's just a child, after all, but he tries._

 

_And then he's ten, and true to his lineage, he kills a man._

 

_They were being followed and Lambo remembered the helpless fear that overcame him when the man destroyed his phone before he could even call. Kyoko and Haru - his family, his sisters - tried to help him escape, to distract the man so that Lambo could ask for help but they weren't fast enough, weren't strong enough, and they woke up bound and sedated in an unfamiliar room. He stared at them, leered at his sisters like he wants to devour their skin with his yellowing teeth and crawl inside them, and Lambo was just ten but he sees red when the man threatens to strip and defile them with his hands._

 

_He moves before he could think. Before he could regret._

 

_He was their little brother first but he never once forgot that he was born a Bovino._

 

_And Bovino's are trained to kill, trained to wield weapons they've created as young as five._

 

_Lightning had crackled on his skin, fraying the ropes that held his wrists behind his back, and he moved, ignored the blow to the side of his head with a resilience that would make Reborn proud, and he steals the gun from the man's holster with piercing green flames coating his fingers._

 

_(For a fleeting second, he thinks of Aunt Ottavio and his parents.)_

 

_Lambo shoots._

 

_He isn't quite the same, after._

 

_(That same night, he crawls into Tsuna's bed and cries, and Tsuna cries with him._

 

_"Tsuna-nii," Lambo whispers brokenly and he wrapped his arms around him. Lambo felt too small, then, like he could easily break if Tsuna held him any tighter. A part of him had wished he could turn back time, wished he could change things so that it didn't have to be this way, but they both understood._

 

_Lambo did what he had to do._

 

_"I'll protect you," Tsuna says instead. He promised, he swore that he will.)_

 

_He couldn't fulfill it, in the end._

 

_"Come to think of it," Byakuran says lightly, the corners of his eyes crinkling in amusement, "you were around his age when you first met Reborn. He got off lucky, didn't he? He's the heir of Bovino, after all."_

 

_And he should worry, he supposes, that Byakuran has stopped pretending to not know._

 

_But he couldn't._

 

_Lambo is-_

 

_His little brother is dead._

 

_He had been too slow, had been too careless, and Lambo is dying before he could move. He had looked at Tsuna through watering eyes, grateful and knowing and pained because he knows his older brother and he knows he'll blame himself the same way he did when Lambo first killed a man. His hands trembled when he reached for his horns and Tsuna wanted so desperately to say he can't, he couldn't, not like this, but Lambo smiled at him through bloodied teeth and asked, "Stay with me?" like he would when he'd go to bed when he was five._

 

_And Tsuna does. He stays, watches as the life drains out of his eyes, and holds his little brother's hand until they stopped holding him back. Until his blood is cold and no longer warm._

 

_"That expression isn't bad at all." Byakuran laughs, revels in the agony that paints itself across the young Decimo's face. "Let's have some more fun, Tsunayoshi-kun!"_

 

_Lambo was the first._

 

_He definitely wasn't the last._

 

*

 

Tsuna jolts awake, his back going ramrod straight and his breathing shaky as he takes in his surroundings with wide, panicked eyes. He grabs at his leg where his holster usually is, fingers twitching violently when he realizes it isn't there, only to stiffen in abrupt realization when he sees the leaking pipes, cracked walls, and shredded curtains of the spacious room.

 

_'-he's gone, he's gone and it's all your fault- if only you tried harder, if only you fought harder, then he wouldn't have-'_

 

He's trying to breathe but he can't do it right, each inhale ending in choked gasps. Unseeing brown eyes drilled into busted windows, his vision not quite coming into focus no matter how much he willed it to, and a pang of intense self-loathing strikes deep into his gut when he feels his hands shake, feels more than sees the forced, ice-cold sparks of white flames.

 

_'He's dead, you killed him, you killed him-'_

 

_'Lambo was just a child.'_

 

_'He didn't deserve to die for someone like you.'_

 

He inhales sharply and puts his head between his knees, feels cold from the sweat trickling down his back. His head is pounding, from the nightmares that kept plaguing him every time he so much as closes his eyes for a few minutes or a month's worth of sleep deprivation, he couldn't tell, but he shoves it aside with the same forced ease he had been subjecting it to for the past few weeks.

 

_'You're running away. You always run away.'_

 

He flinches, hand shying away from his chest, from where the ring used to rest, and he closes his eyes.

 

_'Maybe if you hadn't, Lambo would still be-'_

 

He ignores the trembling of his fingers and shoulders, waits for his breathing to even out and for his heart to stop thudding heavily against his chest, and lifts his head. He wasn't a stranger to the thoughts that haunted him in empty silences - far from it, even - but it has been growing progressively worse ever since he arrived in this timeline.

 

They feel real, not like a dream but a vivid reliving of the past (or was it what would be of the future?), and it's getting harder and harder to ignore, to pretend that it doesn't affect him because it does, he believes every single word that the voice spits, every question, every answer, every accusation. It follows him, lurks in every corner where he expects it the least, and he has no choice but to take it, to live through it like he always had because this time, there's nothing - nobody - left.

 

( _For once, Tsuna is completely and utterly alone._

 

_He tries to convince himself that it's better this way._

 

 _It always had been._ )

 

He scrutinizes the pile of papers in front of him on his makeshift desk with a calm that he doesn't quite feel and tries to focus on the text written on the parchment. He doesn't really succeed for the most part; his eyesight is too blurry, his head is squeezing painfully, and he has to shut his eyes when a wave of nausea hits him from the forced effort he puts into reading what's written on the paper.

 

If his mother could see him now, he thinks a little distantly, she'd be worried.

 

Tsuna doesn't get much sleep. He alternates between a 30-minute nap and 2 hours of sleep, more often than not opting to go through a day without a wink of rest just so he wouldn't have to relive anything he would rather not remember. It's only through sheer will that he's still able to move as much as he is from the sleep deprivation but soon, his body will have to give in. If not from the lack of sleep or rest, then from malnourishment.

 

It's worrying, to say the least, but it wasn't anything new, not for him. He'd grown accustomed to living on bare minimum since food had been scarce back during the war and he didn't exactly have the luxury of taking a break in the midst of it all.

 

( _You say that, but the truth is far more revolting and petty, isn't it?'_ the voice chimes, tone gentle, and Tsuna is helpless to say anything back. _'Those are just pathetic empty excuses. You do this to yourself because you think you deserve it._

 

 _And the thing is, you know you do.'_ )

 

It's been a month and he's lost a lot of weight, his wrists thinning to the extent of looking nothing more than just bones hiding under paper-thin skin and ribs sharp against his drastically greying complexion. The few clothes he'd taken with him hang loosely on his frame, his hair unkempt and growing past his shoulders which he didn't bother fixing. With the little time he has left, his well-being wasn't as much of a priority as theirs was, and Tsuna clung to that, clung to the thought of them being alive, clung to the knowledge that they would be alright, that they wouldn't have to suffer this time because he's here, because he was given one last chance.

 

So he worked and worked, lost himself in it until he couldn't remember the last time he'd slept or eaten even if he tried.

 

A week after he'd left the house, he was able to destroy the evidences of his and his mother's whereabouts along with any records of the Sawada's residence in Namimori and had persistently worked his way through the network of information to manipulate any man with significant association to the Mafia out of the town by making some calls and engaging in deals. Tsuna did his fair share of purging under the Disciplinary Committee's radar until the crime rates crashed into a decimal worth of percentage, far too intimate with the methods and habits of structured organizations along with self-operating individuals to be able to ignore the possibility of a threat, no matter how minor of an inconvenience they might seem. He isn't as skilled, isn't as experienced as Kyo- as _Hibari_ or Spanner and Irie, but he did the best that he could and he estimates that he has at least another couple of weeks before they start having their suspicions.

 

He isn't nearly as close to accomplishing as much as he wanted and the urge to constantly do more itches under his skin until it's unbearable, until he's driven himself into this skeleton of a man that did more work than literally anything else.

 

He had to keep working, had to keep moving because he can't afford to lose the opportunity, not now that he's given a third chance to make things right. Losing some sleep and skipping some meals is a small price to pay in comparison if it meant saving their lives.

 

( _And well, if he ends up dying in the process..._

 

 _They would never have known him._ )

 

Tsuna rakes his ink-stained fingers through his hair and studies the first few papers on top of the pile, squints at them until he's able to read the text through dry and red-rimmed eyes. He knows the information on the parchment like the back of his hand but he reads it still, goes over it thrice to make sure that he doesn't miss anything.

 

He knew that he'd eventually have to encounter certain people, knew that the time would come sooner than he expected. He understands, better than anyone, the inevitability of a direct confrontation where his plan is concerned because although he has the advantage of knowing, he's outnumbered and underpowered, and no matter how much he tries to keep his existence a secret, some people will have to know and Vongola is no exception. His knowledge of the future can only take him so far, he _knows_ that.

 

He toys with the corner of the paper for a while, holds it between his fingers, then places it on top of the pile after another few moments of silent deliberation.

 

 _When it comes down to it,_ he thinks grimly, expression twisting at the familiar spikes of wild dark brown hair and sharp, lidded eyes staring back at him from the paper, _if there's anyone I'd rather find me first, then it would be him._

 

He wrenches his gaze away and stands from the ragged couch, resolutely ignoring the way his knees buckle and vision swims from the abrupt series of movements. He could see the sun rising from the shattered windows framed by tattered indigo curtains that rustled with the whistle of warm breeze, bathing the gigantic, rundown room in a soft orange light that made him feel sick to his stomach.

 

( _Too much like fire, too much like his flames as they curled around Hayato's pale, pale skin-_ )

 

Without waiting for the spots in his eyes to disappear or the throbbing of his head to settle, he walks over to the duffel bag in the corner of the room that he brought with him and rummages through several bunched up clothes and sealed envelopes, knees scraping roughly against the floor when they give beneath him. It takes a while for his fingers to latch on to the white shirt, black sweater vest, and gray pants carefully folded within the nest of hastily crumpled shirts and pants, the corners of his lips unwittingly twitching into a hollow smile when he brings them out of the bag.

 

_"Juudaime!"_

 

_"Yo, Tsuna!"_

 

_"Join the boxing club, Sawada!"_

 

_"Stop crowding, herbivores, or I'll bite you to death."_

 

Tsuna presses his face into his school uniform as something warm trickles down the sides of his cheeks, his breath stuttering in his chest, throat tight with a hundred unspoken words and a million regrets.

 

It's been a long, long time.


	4. Chapter 4

When Tsuna slipped his arms into the sleeves of his uniform, he realizes that it doesn't fit him the same way it used to when he was fifteen.

 

The shirt sagged, hung loosely on his bony shoulders and swallowed his arms and hands, too big and too heavy with a weight that had nothing to do with the material of the clothing but with memories of mocking jeers and hand-shaped bruises on his skin, of scribbled letters on his desk and belongings.

 

It felt- different, felt a little like slipping into something that didn't belong to him.

 

In a way, he supposes it doesn't.

 

He isn't  _him_  after all.

 

Tsuna had looked down at himself when he wore it, at the barely perceptible tremble in his limbs as he lifted his bandaged arms to wear the black vest and bent his scraped knees, at the mottling of purple, greenish blue, and black bruises over his shoulders and down his torso, at the vivid red that colored and outlined his knuckles and thin fingers as he fixed his collar. His body had yet to heal from his recent run in with the yakuza, hadn't fully healed from any other confrontations he had prior to it, his injuries standing out all the more in stark contrast to the pristine white of his shirt.

 

The Sawada Tsunayoshi of this world would wear this with more meat under his skin, Tsuna thinks, more muscle, more  _something_ , and he would have bruises and scars but it would be for an entirely different reason than he does now. He would fiddle with the hem, ruin the straight edges with anxious twisting and folding, would dirty it with soil from stumbling over his own feet and water from dirty buckets and vindictive laughter. He would have stains on the edges of his sleeves, colors or ink or blood, one could only hope to guess, tattered and fraying.

 

(It would be easy, he allows himself to think for just a fleeting moment, to pretend that he  _is_ him.

 

Back inside his bedroom dressing for school minutes before the bell rings as his mother yells from downstairs, telling him to  _hurry, Tsu-kun, you'll be late for your classes_ , the imminent fear of being scolded by Hibari for being late and Nezu-sensei for another unaccomplished homework creeping in the back of his mind. Back in his seat, shifty-eyed and desperate not to be called in front of the class, not to be humiliated for not knowing, for never knowing things that everybody else did, the loud roar of their laughter -  _Dame-Tsuna, Dame-Tsuna_ \- in his ears. Back before Reborn and Vongola, helpless and wasting and hopelessly  _lost_ as he gives up on his studies, on making friends, on being something that wouldn't embarrass his mother in the streets because there was no point in trying to be something that he isn't, that he couldn't be.

 

But this isn't  _back then_. Tsuna isn't fourteen anymore.

 

He's learned to be a lot of things after the inheritance and the war.

 

Being delusional isn't one of them.)

 

He probably should have expected it, a part of him thinks. Instead, all he could do was pretend he never noticed as he turns to walk to the long table in the center of the room with a slight limp in his step and straightens his shoulders, the motion tugging uncomfortably at his injuries, his uniform feeling a little too much like a second layer of skin that's peeling on the surface. He looks at it, more splintering wood than smooth polished brown, and sighs.

 

Several flash drives and five burner phones are arranged in a small disorganized cluster on its surface, forged identity and credit cards peeking from unsealed envelopes just below a gigantic stack of portfolios that contained information on the yakuza and current operating hierarchy of crime in the town. He shuffles through the documents, rereading the handwritten notes at the margins of the paper and once again studying the timetable of classes in Namimori and the Disciplinary Committee's roster, one hip leaning against the side of the desk. There's nothing on paper that he doesn't already know but he does it anyway despite the migraine and dancing spots in his dry eyes.

 

Logically speaking, he knows that there is a -  _significantly_ \- low probability of failure.

 

Chances of a student finding and being able to identify him after his one-month disappearance (succeeding in erasing all information that has to do with him and his mother in the government's database and putting a stop to the investigation of the demolition of the household doesn't immediately translate to being completely and magically forgotten by his classmates and teachers who have spent the better part of his years tormenting him) are rather unlikely due to the current rotation, seeing as it's Hibari who is currently staking claim on patrol for the week. Minimum crowding in the hallways, but a higher risk of encountering the prefect himself. Considering, however, the teenager's lack of investment in his affairs prior to Reborn's arrival, he doesn't think it would pose much of a problem unless he were to deliberately provoke the prefect into thinking otherwise.

 

He puts the papers back down and stares at the other object on his desk. It gleams ominously, untouched and achingly familiar in its presence, and his eyes narrow, a slither of something dark showing through warm brown.

 

A .44 Magnum revolver.

 

( _Don't let your guard down,_ Reborn told him once during training, muzzle pressed brutally against the back of his head, the click of his gun like a gunshot in the silence.

 

It was the very same gun that took Reborn away from him.)

 

There is a low probability of failure, but that doesn't mean it's a guaranteed success.

 

After a moment, he inches closer to take the revolver in his hand, finger smoothly sliding to press lightly over the trigger as he raises his arm and aims at the wall, the movement casual and practiced. He holds,  _halts,_ waits, the bend of his fingertip just shy of sending a bullet through the weathered concrete.

 

If he's caught or recognized, it wouldn't just compromise what he's been doing for the past month but also his current identity.

 

He's in no condition to be able to win a battle against Hibari in a fight, his body too young and frail for the agility and strength he honed through several near-death experiences in the future. For that same reason, he doubts he'd be able to escape or survive a confrontation even if he tried.

 

Tsuna's hands aren't completely clean - quite the contrary, in fact - of matters that would concern the committee's cause. He's pretty much elbow deep in their repertoire, far past the point of discreet meddling from a watchful distance and straight into the territory of sweeping thugs and criminals right under their noses seconds before they could set their foot to investigate the scene. Illegal possession of firearms and counterfeit money, identity document forgery, credit card fraud, computer hacking, and to their eyes, he's a minor, barely even fifteen and taking residence in an abandoned amusement park without parental guidance or a -  _ironically_ \- guardian.

 

Combining Hibari's influence as the head of the Disciplinary Committee with his family's - which he knew based from the man's passing remarks in the future was involved with the yakuza and Triads - not insignificant reputation in the country, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that he's subjecting himself to an irreversible and inescapable death sentence once they lay their eyes on him and match his face with a name. Hibari  _despises_ needless meddling in matters that he's claimed the reinforcement of discipline over and he holds an even greater grudge when said needless meddling happens without him knowing. Going with how long Tsuna's interference has been happening, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what would happen if the teenager sought to look into his background and history.

 

Vongola is just a breath away from digging their claws into him. With the Arcobalenos alive and Nono still bearing the throne, he knows that one small slip is all it takes before it's  _game over_  and the thought of it alone makes his body jerk in livid rage, white-hot fire licking into the back of his eyes-

 

 _"There are… There are times, Boss," Chrome admitted softly, lone eye boring into wooden floor as she desperately clutched at the handle of her trident. She's shaking, Tsuna realized. "Where you get this look in your eyes. Like you're… like you're_ somebody else. _They… don't turn orange like they do when you- when you take the pill or the bullet. They are distant. Like you aren't actually seeing us, like you're- studying us. Like you're about to- like you want to..."_

 

_Tsuna averted his gaze. He could feel Mukuro's presence lurking, hovering over her as if he's afraid that he'll-_

 

" _...They remind me of Byakuran's eyes."_

 

He breathes in sharply, fingernails cutting into the meat of his palm.

 

It can't happen. He won't let it. No matter how little time he's given, no matter how broken his body becomes, he will do everything in his power to prevent it from happening.

 

Even if this isn't real. Even if  _everything_  is just a dream-

 

Tsuna shoots, the recoil barely fazing him as he stands his ground and pictures lifeless grey eyes staring back at him. The resounding bang startles the flock of birds in the trees outside the busted windows, their wings catching against rustling leaves and frantically fluttering to carry them away from the source of the sound. He doesn't move.

 

He was never fond of using guns, preferring the weight of his gloves and fists over the resounding  _bang_  and  _squelch_  of a bullet tearing through skin and flesh. Reborn has trained him regardless of his continued expression of displeasure until he's proficient enough to be a challenge for the Sun Arcobaleno himself, and his training hasn't failed him in the war.

 

" _Do it, Tsunayoshi."_

 

It won't fail him now.

 

* * *

 

 

"I heard that the Monteverde Famiglia was taken out."

 

"Aren't they allied with Chiavarone Famiglia?"

 

"They  _used_ to be allied with Chiavarone. The alliance lasted two months before the Chiavarone Decimo discovered their involvement with recent cases of child pornography and prostitution in Giappone. He wasn't too happy when he found out. Monteverde took it quietly."

 

"It'd be asking for a death sentence if they didn't, considering Chiavarone's alliance with Vongola."

 

"Was it Chiavarone who took them out, then?"

 

"It's a possibility, but it's highly unlikely. The Chiavarone Decimo isn't the type to attack without provocation."

 

"It's quite a shame that their famiglia prefers to play passively, considering their sphere of influence."

 

"Actually, some famiglias are speculating it's Quintilio Salone."

 

" _Salone?"_

 

"Yeah. Haven't heard of their infamous rivalry?"

 

"No, not really."

 

"The Monteverde and Salone have been butting heads for four generations. A long history of skirmishes over territory that has only worsened over the years; almost every famiglia knows of it."

 

"The Salone Famiglia was uninvolved from what I gathered. They were in the middle of a negotiation with Vericchi in Germany when it happened. Unless Quintilio was plotting against Monteverde with Vericchi's assistance, which I doubt they are, then they couldn't have done it."

 

"Isn't it suspicious? Monteverde isn't small. They aren't short on firepower or influence- there's a reason why Chiavarone considered proposing an alliance even if the Decimo wasn't in favor of their methods."

 

"I can't think of any other famiglia that's capable of taking down a famiglia their size without dragging attention towards them."

 

"'Taking down'?" a voice interrupts. "You really are living up to Gatto's reputation of all brawns and no brains."

 

Several pairs of eyes flicker with undisguised animosity and mistrustful scrutiny towards the group of men in the far left of the bar, pinpointing white casts on broken arms and crutches propped on creaking wood near fractured legs, the blood on their chins fresh and the swelling bruises on their eyes and faces telling of a recent battle.

 

The Fourth boss of Limone famiglia sneers. "What made you all think it was a battle that took Monteverde down?"

 

"Wasn't it?" one of Gatto's men scoffs. "How  _else_ would Monteverde have been taken down?"

 

A man from the corner of the establishment -  _Armellino_ , based on the sigil on the back of his hand - snorts derisively.

 

"There weren't any reported casualties, were there? War and gunfire isn't the only way to bring down a famiglia," he points out as he knocks his drink back. "Ever considered bankruptcy?"

 

Limone smirks dryly as he tilts his wrist to swirl the amber liquor in his glass.

 

"Seems oddly and disgustingly familiar, doesn't it?" he asks. "A famiglia of noteworthy influence and not insignificant reputation suffering from sudden bankruptcy that nobody could explain."

 

"I'm pretty certain that every mafiosi in this establishment has considered the possibility, Limone," a man with a distinct facial scar on the left half of his face says.  _Savelli_ , the word that ran across his bandaged torso reads in intricate lettering. "But don't you think it's a bit too far-fetched to assume he has something to do with Monteverde?"

 

"'He'?"

 

"The rumored perpetrator behind Bellafiore's fall.  _Ieyasu_ **.** You haven't heard of him?"

 

"Oh. Oh,  _shit_."

 

Another man barks a sharp laugh, wildly gesturing at the people seated around the bar and nearly knocking two bottles over. "At this point, who fucking hasn't heard of him? The fucker pulverized Bellafiore's men, left them crippled and hospitalized, stripped them of their reputation until they're lower than Estraneo. Money, authority, research. Gone from their vaults and their database." He sloppily snaps his fingers. "Just like that."

 

"I couldn't believe it."

 

"Who are you kidding? Nobody did. Not until they saw Bellafiore limping out of their headquarters and begging for an alliance with  _Bovino_."

 

It's with bitter resentment that someone -  _Di Girolamo,_  the bright gleam of jewelry adorning his neck and fingers almost blinding - concedes, "For once, I agree with Limone."

 

They regard him questioningly, eyebrows raised.

 

"It makes perfect sense that he'd go for Monteverde," he says while flicking his cigarette stick with a fingertip. Upon noticing the uncomprehending expressions, he adds exasperatedly, "You  _said_ it yourself; the reason why they lost the alliance with Chiavarone."

 

The boss of Limone swipes at a bottle to pour into his glass before knocking it back, cut lips stretching into an insincere smile. "What exactly do you think he's been doing? Attacking every famiglia he could think of at the top of his head indiscriminately?"

 

Savelli looks affronted. "But Monteverde has nothing to do with Bellafiore."

 

"Of course  _not_. Monteverde and Bellafiore have rarely crossed paths in the business."

 

He leans back on his stool and pours himself another drink.

 

"You're too focused on Monteverde and Bellafiore that you forget that he hasn't only been going after influential figureheads from the mafia. Guillermo who is barely known in the mafia was also reportedly shut down through the same modus operandi. Why is that?"

 

"Get straight to the fucking point." Savelli scowls.

 

"It's  _Giappone_ ," he says, rolling his eyes. "Where was Bellafiore's base of operations when they were attacked? Where was Monteverde trying to establish a business? Where was Guillermo aiming to further expand their resources? They were all trying to get their hands on Giappone."

 

Then, hushed, he bares his teeth and whispers, "It's a  _purge_."

 

The clink of glass against wood is loud in the hushed silence that follows.

 

"Son of a bitch," more than one mafioso hisses.


End file.
